Sartor Resartus: the life and opinions of Herr Teufelsdrocke eBook

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love
of Teufelsdrockh, which indeed was also by far the
most decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself.
We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor
with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson.
And perhaps with the like return; for Teufelsdrockh
treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard,
as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend,
and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit.
On the other hand, it was curious to observe with
what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection,
our Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and as he fondly
imagined far more practically influential of the two,
looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed
to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdrockh
open his mouth, Heuschrecke’s also unpuckered
itself into a free doorway, besides his being all
eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost:
and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled
out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery
of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed
crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo!
Das glaub’ ich; in either case, by way
of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh
was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion,
and godlike indifference, there was no symptom, then
might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to
whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish was
other than medicinal and sacred.

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did
Teufelsdrockh, at the time of our acquaintance, and
most likely does he still, live and meditate.
Here, perched up in his high Wahngasse watch-tower,
and often, in solitude, outwatching the Bear, it was
that the indomitable Inquirer fought all his battles
with Dulness and Darkness; here, in all probability,
that he wrote this surprising Volume on Clothes.
Additional particulars: of his age, which was
of that standing middle sort you could only guess at;
of his wide surtout; the color of his trousers, fashion
of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we
might report, but do not. The Wisest truly is,
in these times, the Greatest; so that an enlightened
curiosity leaving Kings and such like to rest very
much on their own basis, turns more and more to the
Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader
expects that, with all our writing and reporting,
Teufelsdrockh could be brought home to him, till once
the Documents arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and
Bodily Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter
only of faint conjecture. But, on the other hand,
does not his Soul lie enclosed in this remarkable
Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia’s did
in the buried Bag of Doubloons? To the soul
of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely,
on the “Origin and Influence of Clothes,”
we for the present gladly return.